Escorts are pretty simple, but they require some forward thinking to be effective.

Specialize in your skills, using a mix of beams, cannons, torps and turrets is an ineffective disaster. Use 2 at the most, cannons w/ turrets and a torp is common. Use cannon abilities like scatter volley or rapid fire to maximize cannons, dual cannons and turrets, torp abilities like high yield or spread and beam abilities like fire at will or beam overload for beam/dual beams. I'd recommend you stick with cannons unless you want to do PvP later on.